Pop most often sells a fantasy of great times being had by beautiful people. The “most viral” song of 2015, though (source: Spotify), was Here by Alessia Cara, a track quickly hailed as an introvert’s anthem. Over an Isaac Hayes loop previously repurposed by Portishead for Glory Box, the then-18-year-old Canadian eloquently demolished the lie about teenage parties being fun. Cara’s in the corner, “under clouds of marijuana”, hating the music.

It helped that Cara sang it like a sultry R&B siren and that even lairy hedonists have felt the same. A plainer wallflower might not have received as much empathy. But Here quickly joined the ranks of populist smashes that chip away at mainstream pop discourse, songs such as Lorde’s Royals (2013) or even Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass (2014). Here has now clocked up 79m YouTube streams and Taylor Swift invited Cara to guest-sing Here in front of 55,000 fans in an arena.

So Know-It-All, Cara’s debut album, arrives, four months after its US release, with much to live up to: the work of a young woman with an old soul, a co-writer/producer, Sebastian Kole, and an elastic, versatile voice (check out Cara’s cover of Swift’s Bad Blood, including the Kendrick Lamar verse, on YouTube) keen to say novel things about teenage experience.

Know-It-All has sweet spots, but doesn’t match the promise. Although the persuasive Seventeen finds Cara nostalgic for youth, much of Know-It-All is common-or-garden pop in which she moons about boys over breakbeats (I’m Yours), acoustic guitar (Stone) or piano (Stars), or dreams of fame from her bedroom (Four Pink Walls; resolutely not the gynaecological kind). After sampling Isaac Hayes, the production physically recoils from further hipness, opting for a wipe-clean shopping mall shine.

There’s substance on the final track, Scars to Your Beautiful, where Cara tackles the beauty myth à la Beyoncé. The verses pack some good stuff – “What’s a little bit of hunger? I can go a little bit longer,” Cara sings, from the point of view of a would-be cover girl. But the thumping motivational chorus merely suggests we are all stars – not terribly useful, especially seeing that the last song, Stars, proffered the same twinkly end-point.

Cara genuinely believes she is a rebel. Outlaws, a doo-wop waltz, packs some promising writing (“You’ll never face a judge without me, you’ll never battle the gavel alone”) let down by the fact that a suburban Torontonian who hates parties is highly unlikely to be “partners in crime” with anyone deeply felonious.

Wild Things, the heir to Here, makes a more persuasive case. “The cool kids aren’t cool to me/ They’re not cooler than we,” sings Cara with a Lorde-ish toss of the head. More like this and the promising singer really could have felt smug.